


My heart still has a suitcase

by narcissablaxk



Series: Now or Never [3]
Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Caught in a Storm, Clementine - Freeform, First Kiss, Halsey - Freeform, M/M, No power, Summer storm, larusso, mostly - Freeform, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24774823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: Wish I could see what it's like to be the blood in my veins. Do the insides of all of my fingers still look the same? And can you feel it too, when I am touchin' you? And when my hair stands on ends, it's saluting you. The blush in your cheeks says that you bleed like me, and the 808 beat sends your heart to your feet. Left my shoes in the street so you'd carry me - through a breakdown, through a breakdown or a blackout, would you make out with me, on the floor of the mezzanine?Johnny and Daniel get stuck in a thunderstorm.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Series: Now or Never [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772686
Comments: 4
Kudos: 175





	My heart still has a suitcase

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by Halsey's song Clementine. Go give it a listen!

Two martinis later and Daniel had successfully quieted his conscience that told him giving Johnny Lawrence a car (a car he could speed with no less) was a bad idea. But Louie had fucked up, and this was the only way to make it right. Johnny himself had helped along his conscience, his rough-edged charm wearing down Daniel’s own sharp corners like well-handled sheet of sandpaper. He was still foul-mouthed, and irritating, but there was something exhilarating about trading barbs with him that he just couldn’t find in other people. 

“Where to, Danielle?” Johnny asked when he got himself settled behind the wheel. He had his hand on the seatbelt, like he was only half-considering putting it on. “Still angling for that rematch?” 

“Rumble in Receda?” Daniel mocked, even though he was pretty sure that wasn’t the tagline. “I’ve had one too many martinis to bother with kicking your ass right now, Johnny.” Truthfully, he hadn’t realized how sturdy Johnny looked, how impenetrable he seemed when he stood up straight, his hands huge and intimidating. Maybe he was just feeling his age. 

Or maybe he was pretty sure he’d lose. 

“Okay, princess,” Johnny said, amiably enough, and maybe it was the beers he’d had that were making him more agreeable than usual, but either way, Daniel wasn’t going to complain. “Then, I return to the original question – where to?” 

“You’re not my chauffeur,” Daniel waved him off. He paused. “But we should go get the paperwork for the car at the dealership.” 

“So…” Johnny drew out the word, buckling up like Daniel had just feared he wouldn’t, “I _am_ your chauffeur after all.” 

“Shut up.” 

“For a car salesman, you’re really bad at making things sound appealing,” Johnny said, turning on the car, turning down the radio when he didn’t immediately recognize the song. 

“Paperwork is never appealing,” Daniel muttered, picking at the handle of the door. “No one can sell that.” 

“Especially not the little refined Jersey auto king of the valley,” Johnny said sarcastically, picking most of his fingers up off the steering wheel to mock him. “Do all of those people know what you used to sound like before you became the auto king?” 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” 

“Like a chihuahua on drugs,” Johnny continued, “with a Vinnie Barbarino accent.” 

“I did not –”

“You did,” Johnny cut him off, but the edges of his mouth were turning up, like it wasn’t a terribly ugly memory he was recalling. “The way you turn into a fucking motor-mouth when you get mad…” he trailed off, his eyes replaying whatever he wasn’t saying out loud. The fact that he had deemed whatever he thought best kept silent made Daniel even more anxious. 

“What?” he prompted. “What were you going to say?” 

Johnny glanced at him while they were stopped at a red light, his eyes bright and blue even in the dark, his jaw sharp and square and almost cocky at this angle, but didn’t answer him. There was a secret dancing there, in his eyes, and for a moment, Daniel didn’t want to know what it was. 

And then he realized that yes, _yes_ he definitely wanted to know. 

“Nothing,” Johnny said finally as the light turned green. 

They don’t talk for a while after that, so Daniel turned up the radio to hide the not-entirely-unfamiliar spark of something that lingered in the car in their silence, hoping that some band they both liked would come on and save him. 

But no, he was subjected to ACDC, and then Guns ‘n’ Roses, which, as a rule, weren’t bad, but weren’t something he and Johnny could bond over the way they had REO Speedwagon. That was the first moment he had turned to the man in the driver’s seat and saw someone different. That person had stuck around when they were standing outside Daniel’s old apartment building, and he had lingered when they were drinking at the bar. 

He seemed to be fading now, and if that was a realization that the real world was coming back in, then Daniel was determined to chase it back out. If they could get along just fine this afternoon, there was no reason why that couldn’t continue. 

“Is this – is this the longest you’ve ever been silent in your life?” Johnny asked, his voice markedly tentative in a false way that pulled a laugh from Daniel even while he struggled with his indignation. 

“I am perfectly capable –”

“I wouldn’t go that far, hot shot –”

Okay, maybe expecting them to get along was yet another one of Daniel’s unreachable pipe dreams. He chalked it up with the rest: Mr. Miyagi’s Little Trees, an SEC investigation into Terry Silver, and Anthony getting into karate. 

“Does it look like it’s going to rain?” Daniel interrupted, his eyes on the sky. Johnny leaned forward in his seat, squinting out at the clouds above them. What the hell was he squinting for? Did he need glasses? 

Oh God, was he in the car with an idiot who needed glasses to drive and refused to get them? Because that was exactly something Johnny Lawrence would do. 

“Open the window,” Johnny finally said. “Does it smell like rain?” 

“That’s a terrible way of checking the weather,” Daniel groused, rolling down the window and inhaling. 

Johnny beside him, shrugged. “Smells like rain.” 

“I’m going to check my phone,” Daniel left the window halfway down while he fumbled with the thumbprint reader on his phone, closing all of the open apps and searching for the weather. 

“Why, what’s your stupid computer phone going to tell you?” Johnny asked. “Is it gonna call you and warn you about getting your precious, pretty hair wet?” 

His phone actually said there was an 80 percent chance of rain the next three hours. He opened his mouth to say just that, but stopped. “You think my hair is pretty?” 

Johnny snapped his jaw shut. “I was…mocking you, genius,” he said half-heartedly, and Daniel turned his head away from him so he wouldn’t see his smile. He didn’t want to have to explain it. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to if Johnny asked anyway. 

“80 percent chance of rain in the next three hours,” he said instead. 

They were pulling up to the dealership now, and through the open window, Daniel could see the tendrils of lightning racing across the sky, so bright it seemed like the universe wanted to take pictures with the flash, and he wondered, almost absently, what it was about this night that the universe wanted to remember so badly. 

“Are you just going to stand there looking at the sky or are you going to unlock the door?” Johnny asked as a fat, warm raindrop landed on the pavement between them. His eyes followed it, a grin sneaking up his face. “Better get that door unlocked quick, or it’s going to ruin your hair, LaRusso.” 

“You’re so obsessed with my hair,” Daniel muttered, fumbling with his keys. 

“’Cause you keep touching it,” Johnny defended. “It’s weird. Why are you always touching it?” 

“I am not!” Daniel protested as thunder rumbled through the sky, so slow and even that they both stood still to listen. In the distance, the black clouds gave way to a bluish-purple glow of what must have been the moon. The drops on the pavement were still sparse, so separate it might has well have been a polka-dot pattern, and then, as Daniel looked at it, the dots started to swell and take over each other. 

“Get inside, LaRusso!” Johnny shouted over the new thunder, this one loud and boisterous. He pushed the door open, Johnny crowding against his back to get inside before they could both get soaked. 

They stood in the showroom, watching the sky light up outside, for a moment before Johnny cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “Paperwork?” 

***

Being in LaRusso’s dealership at night, when there was no one to stare weirdly at him for his clothes or his five o’clock shadow, was far less intimidating than Johnny expected. Maybe it was because the empty place reminded him of a weird doctor’s office, one that probably dealt with feet or your ass or something gross. It was sterile in here when it wasn’t populated by people paid to make the place seem inviting. 

Daniel led him back to his office, where the paperwork for the Challenger was sitting on the top of a pile of other shit. He grabbed it and a pen and started flipping through it, sparing Johnny only a glance when he followed him in. “You can sit down,” he said, gesturing to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. 

Johnny didn’t. It felt too much like being in the principal’s office when he got in trouble, and he didn’t much like to think of Daniel being his principal. 

He really did like to think about it, but this wasn’t the place.

Instead, he started looking around, content to cast his eyes over all of the décor, knowing as he did that it would make Daniel nervous. Well – if Johnny had to be nervous, then so did he, dammit. 

There was a framed picture of Daniel with Miyagi on one of the shelves, a small child that must be Samantha next to them. Daniel’s smile was wide, so wide his eyes were all squinty and unapologetically happy. Just looking at it made Johnny smile. He had never seen that smile before. 

Underneath it was a picture of Daniel with his mom and someone who must have been his dad – they looked just alike. Same brown hair, same piercing eyes, same everything. 

He had corporate posters on the walls, landscapes that were so bland they inspired a scoff that he barely managed to keep in. But there was one, behind Daniel, that looked different. It was a beach, stormy and intriguing, like a mystery novel turned into a photo. 

“Where is that?” he asked when he finally decided that Daniel must know, or else why would it be here? 

Daniel barely spared him a glance before turning around to take in the photo. “That’s Okinawa,” he said, and there was a wistfulness in his voice that made Johnny ache for childhood, for adolescence, for something different than adulthood and its monotony. 

Daniel turned back to the paperwork, his hands patting his jacket until he found whatever he was looking for. He reached into the inside pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses, sliding them on so they reached the edge of his nose. He continued reading the paperwork, marking with quick slash marks that Johnny didn’t understand. 

Thunder crashed outside and Daniel jumped, just enough that when he looked up to see if Johnny saw, they made eye contact over the rim of his glasses. Something twisted in Johnny’s gut, and he opened his mouth to say something, anything that would dispel whatever was going on here, and then something worse happened. 

The lights stuttered and went out. 

“Shit,” Daniel muttered, and Johnny laughed. It was eerily dark in Daniel’s office, when the only windows were out onto the now pitch-black hallway of other executive offices rather than the sales floor. “What the hell are you laughing at?” 

“You, LaRusso,” Johnny replied. “What are you going to do about it? Trip over your chair, and then your desk, and then your rug on your way to beat my ass?” 

“Shut up, Johnny,” is his flawless comeback, but Johnny can hear through the darkness that he’s smiling. The thought buoys him, somehow, leaving him feeling strangely elated. 

And then he heard Daniel getting up from his chair, and he went very still. The last thing he wanted was to actually run head-first into LaRusso in the dark. “What are you doing now, Danielle?” 

“I’m getting your paperwork,” Daniel’s voice was closer now, but how the hell had he moved and Johnny not heard him? “And I’m getting a pen, and we’re going out to the showroom, where we can see.” 

“The paperwork is so important to you, isn’t it?” Johnny taunted, listening intently for him. He was rustling at the desk now, but he was pretty sure he was in front of it, not behind it. “If you run into me, LaRusso –”

And then he did exactly that, his shoulder clipping him in the bicep, and Johnny realized with a rush that even though Daniel puffed himself up to reach Johnny’s height, he really did have a few inches on him. He caught him, his hands catching both shoulders instantly, like a reflex, and held him still. 

“Let me go, idiot,” Daniel muttered. 

“Can I get out of your way first?” Johnny asked. “Or are you so desperate to grope me in the dark that you’re going to keep running into me like a friggin’ bumper car?” 

“Shut up,” he said, like he always did, and Johnny released him, careful to step behind him when he did to avoid any other accidental run-ins. Truthfully, after fighting for so many years, it wasn’t like either of them were adverse to physical contact. 

But still, in the dark, it was different. Wasn’t it?

“Hey, are you coming?” Daniel was only a few steps in front of him, Johnny could tell by his voice, and the dark seemed to be altering that as well. He was speaking softer, like there was someone else listening to their conversation, like the whole world had gone quiet for them. 

“Yeah, I’m coming.” His voice was matching his volume, and he felt Daniel’s hand brush against his hip. Without thinking, without bothering to let his brain come up with anything coherent, Johnny took his hand and let Daniel lead him out of the dark office and into the hallway. 

It wouldn’t have been hard to find his way out without Daniel leading him, but still, it was a nice gesture, and they had been largely getting along all day, so Johnny let it happen. Daniel’s hand is far more calloused than he expected it to be, and he found himself tracing the little half-moon shaped rough spots with his finger. Daniel either didn’t notice, or didn’t comment. 

When they got to the showroom, Daniel released him, pulling his hand back and flexing it. 

“Just sign here,” he said, putting the paperwork on the hood of some car that Johnny couldn’t identify in the dim light. Out here, the sky and the moon illuminated them, casting long shadows through the windows that reminded Johnny of his bedroom when he was a teenager, back in Encino. It always reminded him of horror movies, all floating linen curtains and secrets hiding behind them. 

He scribbled his name and passed the paperwork back, ignoring the way Daniel’s hand brushed against his in the exchange, trying to ignore the way his heart jackhammered through his ribcage. 

“We should get out of here,” Daniel said finally, and his voice is still quiet, so soft that Johnny cants forward to hear him better, close enough that their shoulders brush past each other, reminiscent of a gravitational pull. 

He’s still wearing those glasses, Johnny can see them now in the dim light of the storm, his eyes full of thunder and lightning of their own, and he could lean in, he thinks, he could, and Daniel would let him, because he can see the way Daniel’s eyes go down to his mouth in the darkness, and then the thunder rolls again and they move apart, the spell shattered. 

“Where to, Princess?” 

***

Daniel doesn’t give him a direct answer so they get into the Challenger, getting soaked on the way into the car alone, Johnny behind the wheel again and pulling out of the parking lot with his own destination in mind. Daniel didn’t really care where they went – he was too caught up in what almost happened before they left. 

He could have kissed him – he wanted to – and they would have if the thunder hadn’t startled them apart. He glanced over at Johnny now, the rain and the windshield wipers sending a pattern over his face that is as tantalizing as his crystal blue eyes in the dark of the dealership. 

He ran his fingers over the callouses on his palm, remembering how Johnny’s fingers had traced them the same way, feather soft and gentle, in the pitch black. It was almost reverent, the way he touched him, a tentative exploration. 

He wondered if Johnny would kiss him the same way. 

He pushed that out of his mind – it was an impossibility anyway – and turned his attention to the road outside. It took him a few blocks to realize where they were going. 

“You – are you really going –?”

Johnny glanced over for just a moment before turning his attention back to the road. “If we got to do your trip down memory lane, then we get to do mine, too.” 

Daniel was suddenly very aware of the dampness of his suit, pressing into his skin. “You can’t even get in.” 

“So?” Johnny asked. “You couldn’t get into your old apartment.” 

Daniel pursed his lips and didn’t respond. He was technically correct. 

And then they were turning into the parking lot, and Daniel could see it all again, like it just happened. He was walking beside Mr. Miyagi, holding his trophy, hobbling along without help, like he’d insisted, because he was an idiotic, proud kid. Johnny was standing out in the parking lot with the rest of the Cobras, looking dejected. 

He remembered catching his gaze across the asphalt, the way Johnny had given him a nod of respect. They understood each other now, better than before. Their rivalry was over. Things would get better. 

And then Kreese. 

They sat in the car, staring out at the parking lot in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Once his replay got to the part that still woke him up at night, Kreese with his arm locked around Johnny’s neck, Johnny struggling to breathe, Daniel wrenched himself out of it and turned his gaze on Johnny. Johnny, who was still looking out at the parking lot with a mixture of fondness and fear. 

“I wonder if they set up the blue mats,” he muttered, mostly to force Johnny out of his reverie. 

Beside him, Johnny turned, his mouth quirked. “What?” 

“They’re installing new mats for the tournament tomorrow,” Daniel said. 

“Why?” 

“I don’t know –”

“The red mats are classic!” 

“I know!” Daniel grinned at him, satisfied that the ghost of Kreese had been chased away. “That’s what I said, but I was overruled.” 

“Come on,” Johnny said, turning off the car and pushing the door open, struggling a little against the rain and the wind. “Let’s see if we can see them.” 

“Johnny!” Daniel called, but Johnny was already jogging across the parking lot in the rain, his shirt darkening with every step. He groaned and pushed his own door open, following. 

He was soaked by the time they got to the awning in front of the entrance. Johnny had his hands cupped around his eyes, peering inside. 

“You’re going to get sick,” Daniel protested. 

“Oh, come on, princess,” Johnny mocked. “Look, they’re right there.” 

He pressed his finger against the glass, his eyes bright with excitement. “They haven’t set them up yet,” Daniel muttered, peeking in.

“I guess not,” Johnny said. He turned away from the windows and leaned against them, looking out at the parking lot. “Hard to believe it’s been so long.” 

Daniel mirrored him, looking out at the empty parking lot. “Doesn’t feel like it.” 

Johnny grumbled his assent, and Daniel could see his head turn toward him. “You’re right,” he said. “Especially with you here.” 

“Like the ghost of Christmas past,” Daniel laughed. “Haunting you.” 

Johnny was turned completely toward him now, the parking lot forgotten. “Sometimes it feels like that’s all we’ve done,” he said, and his voice was so quiet Daniel had to lean closer to hear it. “Haunt each other.” 

Daniel agreed, sighing so heavily he felt the renewed press of his wet clothes against his skin. “I’ll always haunt you,” he said softly. He wasn’t sure why he said it, but it was the truth in several ways. What Johnny had done to him in high school would stay with Johnny for a long time, he could see it in the sad lines around his eyes. But so would the way they brought out each other’s truest selves. 

“Promise?” Johnny asked, and Daniel turned more completely to face him. The water from his jog across the parking lot was leaking from his hair, sliding down his face in shallow rivulets that hypnotized him. 

He didn’t answer him, but reached up and ran his fingers through Johnny’s wet blond hair, sending droplets flying in every direction, splattering against the window and everywhere else. Johnny let him do it, his eyes still on Daniel, still full of ghosts and promises. 

He didn’t stop Johnny when he leaned in this time, but pulled his glasses out of the way to meet him better. Johnny didn’t miss his movement, and Daniel could feel him smiling against his lips, his hands sneaking underneath his drenched jacket to find the dry shirt underneath. He tasted like beer and a bit like a peppermint, and Daniel realized, with a jolt, that he had taken a peppermint candy from his office while they were in the dark. 

He pulled away hurriedly, careful not to dislodge Johnny’s arms. “Did you take a peppermint candy from my office?” 

Johnny shrugged, but he could see the smile at the corner of his lips. “I don’t want to taste like beer,” he said finally, in protest. 

The fact that he had been planning, or hoping, that this would happen since the dealership sent a lightning bolt of desire through him, and he pressed himself to Johnny again, capturing his lips this time, unforgiving, punishing, but still with a smile. Johnny met him with the same energy, the same way they fought, and they stayed that way, kissing under the dripping awning, until the thunder pulled them apart again.


End file.
